Dir: Halkawt Mustafa | Drama 2026
There is something immediately striking about No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman. Even before the first frame has been screened in Venice, Halkawt Mustafa’s title announces a film interested in turning one of the ugliest beliefs of the ISIS era into an act of defiance. Its protagonist, Vyan, is a Kurdish sniper who returns to the ruins of Mosul after learning that the younger sister she believed lost during the 2014 ISIS assault may still be alive.
It is a potentially explosive premise, but Mustafa appears to be aiming for something more complicated than a conventional revenge thriller. Vyan has survived war by suppressing her emotions; returning to Mosul therefore means confronting not simply an enemy but the psychological landscape she has spent years trying to escape. The rescue of her sister becomes inseparable from the rescue of herself.
That distinction could prove crucial. The danger with films about ISIS and the wars in Iraq is that the sheer horror of the subject can overwhelm character. Mustafa instead places a woman at the centre of the story whose greatest battle may not be the one fought through a rifle sight. This is a thriller of considerable physical intensity — explosions, ruined streets and armed confrontation — but the emotional proposition is quieter: what happens when someone who has learned to survive by shutting down is forced to feel again?
Avan Jamal, as Vyan, has an unusually demanding role. She must embody a woman who is both highly trained and emotionally damaged, someone capable of extraordinary violence while carrying the vulnerability of a sister who refuses to believe that her family is gone. Thorbjørn Harr also features in the cast, alongside Kanar Sarchl and Kader Jalal.
The film’s connection to real history gives the project additional weight. Mustafa has said that his encounters with women who fought ISIS helped inspire the film, while the story is also influenced by the courage of Nadia Murad, whose experience of the Yazidi genocide became one of the most important testimonies to the crimes committed by the organisation.
That background makes the film’s title more than sensational marketing. It points towards a disturbing piece of ideological mythology and, more importantly, towards the way women fighters became symbols of resistance against ISIS. Mustafa’s challenge will be to prevent that symbolism from becoming simplistic. The most interesting version of this film will not merely show a formidable woman killing men who deserve to die; it will show what violence has cost the woman who has learned to do it.
There is also an intriguing contradiction at the heart of the project. No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman is being presented as an action drama, yet its deepest subject appears to be trauma, memory and the possibility of emotional recovery. That gives it the potential to move beyond the familiar grammar of the war movie.
Mustafa, who previously directed Hiding Saddam Hussein, is returning to Iraq’s recent history but approaching it through fiction and through a distinctly female perspective. The film was shot in Mosul, lending its physical world an authenticity that could be particularly powerful on the big screen. Venice has placed the film in its Venice Open – Out of Competition strand
Whether Mustafa can balance the visceral demands of the thriller with the much harder task of portraying the aftermath of war remains the key question. But the premise is compelling, the setting carries enormous dramatic force, and Vyan has the makings of a memorable screen heroine.
If the film succeeds, No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman could be more than another film about the fight against ISIS. It could be a story about a woman returning to the place that destroyed her in order to reclaim the part of herself that survived. And that is a considerably more interesting battle than the one suggested by the rifle in her hands.
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2026